By influential I mean their features inspired other designs. These are the pistols I believe helped to shape the popular design of pistols throughout the 20th century.



1911: The grand-daddy of modern handguns, most every modern pistol borrows from the 1911's method of lock-up.

Browning Hi-Power: The next evolution of the 1911 that brought a high capacity double stacked magazine to the table, and a simplified 1911 method of lock-up.

Walther P38: The P38 gave us a 9mm service pistol with a double action / single action trigger and a manual safety / decocker. Until the Glock craze of the late 1980's, double action "wonder 9's" were all the rage and the Walter set the stage for that era of handgun development.

Glock 17: While it wasn't the first polymer framed pistol and it wasn't the first pistol to use a striker, it did bring these features and others together into a package that hadn't been seen before. The Glock gave us a polymer framed pistol with a 17 round magazine and a unique passive safety incorporated into the trigger itself that made the pistol stand out in the market place. Ultimately the Glock has inspired countless other companies to copy it's features and it helped to bring the modern polymer pistol to the forefront of handgunning.